The response of SOME U.S. citizens is to make foolish jokes.--there, fixed for youRegrettably, I cannot fix your bigotry.

A large percentage of U.S. citizens are glad that the Guardian published the information that Snowden took. While he broke the rules, the news media has a responsibility to publish these documents to highlight any improprieties and illegalities going on in the U.S. Federal Government. That's what the news media did with "Watergate" and the Ellsburg Paper. It resulted in the resignation of POTUS Richard M. Nixon. There is no reason for these documents to be withheld now. Regrettably, the U.S. news media did not take the lead in this particular story or other stories during the current regime.

That's great that many US citiziens are glad. Meanwhile, Snowden himself can't travel because every country is scared shitless what your government will do to them if they protect the whistleblower from the corrupt government who wants to lock him up for good.

You do live in a democracy right? That means YOU the American people are responsible for your government. Stop being pussies and blaming it on the other 99% of the population and do something about it please. Protest, riot, petition, whatever you ne

The patriotic bias is one of the most widespread, and unrecognized, journalistic slants. Frankly, as a stakeholder (voter) I'd rather the media just tell us the truth instead of what they think should be he truth. That way I can make reasonable decisions and use my power wisely

I enjoyed the response of Europeans a lot more when they learned their governments were doing the exact same thing. Americans care about this stuff. When people in other countries learn their governments do the exact same things, they try to excuse it then turn the conversation back to America.

And the point is -- does it matter what is illegal for the Finnish government to do inside foreign nations, when that's basically like envisioning Queens and Brooklyn invading Jersey?

Well, Finland is bordering a nation with largest landmass in the world whose population has historically posed an existential risk to Finns with wars fought on the most centuries since pre-800 AD. It is in the interest of self-preservation to know what your neighbour has parked near your border and what he's up to if a successful suckerpunch will lead to the complete collapse of organized national defense.

Probably. You have to remember that the government has different standards for others than for us. We don't care if we violate international law. We only care if others violate the rules we set (be they laws we set or otherwise).

Probably. You have to remember that the government has different standards for others than for us. We don't care if we violate international law. We only care if others violate the rules we set (be they laws we set or otherwise).

This doesn't even touch the worst of it. There are now 50,000 compromised computer networks out there, there will be a mad rush by organised crime and various criminal organisation to find those, network time bombs and make use of them. Even fucking worse, these hacks on the odd occasion will have been planted on the networks of criminal organisations, so all they have to do is find them local, decode and then they will have the basis for the keys to 50,000 other networks. Those fucking morons have created

Wasn't this exactly what the USA declared to be considered an act of war, that would justify retaliation with conventional weapons?

And the people with political power are the ones who stand to get even richer if it does start another war (digital or conventional). They don't care who else dies or if the economy as a whole goes down the shitter as long as they make money. The US's defense budget is HUGE, how much of that goes to private contracts? In 2011, $374 billion went to private contracts, 15 times greater than any other US federal agency.

Wasn't this exactly what the USA declared to be considered an act of war, that would justify retaliation with conventional weapons?

Exactly, all members of the NSA are guilty of high treason. Think about it, over the last several decades they have worked quietly behind the scenes to deliberately weaken all encryption algorithms and computer/electronic security.

Every time a hospital or the electrical grid gets hacked and taken out of service, every time a rival hacks in and steals classified information from a government computer or trade secrets from a corporate one, every time someone's identity gets stolen, every time someone's computer gets infected by a virus, the NSA directly contributed to the ease by which this was done. That is IMHO directly supplying aid and comfort to enemies of the people.

No need to get to war. Just reject all government agreements with that hostile country, put your case in the ONU, La Haya or any other international entity related with this and rally the other affected countries to do the same, even put a trade embargo like the ones love to put. At the very least will serve to see which governments are in the bed with US in this, and would give their citizens a reason to kick them in the next election, as we know that the US people won't do that with their own government,

That would be impossible to happen. No other country has the military capabilities to forgo US aid in case of invasion from any number of outside threats. Russia could take most every European country should something like that happen and they were isolated from half of the western allies (Including European countries who didn't give in).

Besides, the economic problems that would arise would be enough to stop most countries from doing that. It really just isn't realistic for it to happen.

Muscle is no longer required these days. Cyber attacks and drone strikes are well within the budget capacities of wealthy individuals, never mind nation states. It may not have happened yet, but one no longer needs an aircraft carrier to project power around the world.

It's reasonable to expect every intelligence agency to spy on anyone they can.

Perhaps as regards governments the hypocrisy should be dropped, and caught spies simply traded for other caught spies as was Cold War custom. Business IS business, and trusting anyone, even "allies" (whatever that means) can be childish especially if they are penetrated by enemy operatives.

It's reasonable to expect every intelligence agency to spy on anyone they can.

Why is that "reasonable"? Shouldn't they be focusing their resources of groups/nations that present some threat to us?

The idea there is that (for example) Israel *does* present a nuclear armed threat to America because they have a set of conventional and nuclear capabilities that *could* threaten American interests. For this reason paranoid (professional intelligence) people in the US want to know all the details of what and wher

"Not to mention that "penetrated by enemy operatives" sounds more like a movie synopsis rather than a rational approach to international diplomacy."

Such penetration was commonplace during the Cold War and no reason exists to believe it would stop since there is much to be gained from knowledge. International diplomacy should logically embrace the idea that there are "no friends or enemies, only interests" because it's really a bunch of different mobs cutting deals while vying for advantage.

Nothing about building it themselves? Or buying from a friendly nation that they trust NOT to spy on them like that?

If if a nation cannot develop computer software then probably you shouldn't even bother spying upon them:-) But even if a target nation is not known for software prowess but still warrants spying (Pakistan, Iran?) they still have F/OSS that can be obtained from multiple servers, compared, reviewed, compiled, and code-signed. Unlike digging ditches, one programmer can supply software for un

Then you shouldn't have any problem naming two such incidents. So prove it.

This is retarded to even think but, okay. In the real world, a friend today can become the enemy tomorrow. Not to mention, we actually get most of our best intelligence from our allies, whether they wish to give it to us or not.

Yeah. That's why we have that string of military bases along the US/Canada border.

We have 70+ military bases and installations along the Us/Canada border from Washington in the west to Maine in the east. Here [google.com]

So cutting US exports is a good thing in your opinion? I would say that it was a problem.
And why would the software from other nations be compatible with our software? And if it isn't then there is the problem with "lock in" and not much benefit from "competition".

Why would it need to be compatible?

Apple has been around for years and has a lot of money.
And yet there are still times when dealing with a government agency or a private company that a Microsoft product is required.
So why do you think that this situation will be improved by introducing MORE platforms that are intentionally incompatible?

First of all, when the government began introducing computers into the common work environments, Apple was not a real comp

Why is that "reasonable"? Shouldn't they be focusing their resources of groups/nations that present some threat to us?

Why wouldn't military allies pose a threat? Seriously, this is an incredibly naive view of the utility of intelligence. You think that a relatively small number of terrorists trying ineffectually to lob a few bombs is really the only major concern? Or even "partner/competitor" nations like China that have a single second hand aircraft carrier? No state military power is realistically goi

Yes the UK and US have sold the world on Engima like units for crypto and told them to always trust the skilled US gov staff setting and testing US standards.
Reality has now set in and many other contractors, nations, mil, groups within govs, cults, oligopolies, duopolies, cartels, faiths, criminals seem to be able to buy the same 'keys' for their own ends.
The other aspect is who is testing all the countries crypto internally... how did all this US/UK crypto junk get passed the testing of top gov staff a

It's reasonable to expect every intelligence agency to spy on anyone they can.

Perhaps as regards governments the hypocrisy should be dropped, and caught spies simply traded for other caught spies as was Cold War custom. Business IS business, and trusting anyone, even "allies" (whatever that means) can be childish especially if they are penetrated by enemy operatives.

Your hand waving abilities are not as strong as you think.
It's not reasonable to expect such behaviour. Regardless, it's not acceptable and that's what matters. I agree that acting shocked isn't going to help anyone's cause but something should be done to stop the NSA from being out of control.

Wow.. spying on allies is like molesting children now. Some of you people have a seriously fucked view on life.

I don't know what else to say. This is definitely disturbing and I'm at a loss of the comparison other then to say it is seriously fucked up- not even close if you were using nukes to take out a mouse.

The US is choosing the path of aggression instead of the pathof civilized behavior.

This is a strategy designed by fools. If the fools responsible were theonly ones who would pay for their crimes that wouldn't be so bad.

But every American will pay for what a tiny minority of American swine have done.

By the way, before you start in with your xenophobic redneck moron responses, I AM an American,and I see what is coming and I do not like it one bit. When the rest of the world has had enoughof the US overstepping its bounds, all the US military power won't make a bit of difference.Economic sanctions alone can and will bring the US to its knees. If you don't believe this ispossible, you need to read more history.

In spite of everything, U.S. is still a big country with a lot of natural resources. The only reason most of those resources are not being exploited is availability of cheap resources from elsewhere. Sanctions that isolate the U.S. will merely shift the opportunity inwards. There'd be a whole lot of growth of the industry. Yeah, there'd also be the environmental problems that it brings, but oh well, at the moment we're merely exporting them.

Economically, the US is already on its knees. The fitness of the US economy is on par with Greece. The only thing holding it up is its reputation, and that is going down the drains really fast at the moment...

As a Russian citizen I doubt. You know, the strength of US Dollar is based on the fact that it's the only currency exchangeable to petroleum, and every country that uses any other currency for this purpose becomes democratic. (Saddam sold oil for Euros, and his country became democratic, Lybia sold oil for Euros and became democratic too, Iran sold oil for gold and will surely become democratic immediately after Syria).

The US is choosing the path of aggression instead of the path of civilized behavior. This is a strategy designed by fools.

It is called "game theory". It is a virus that teaches that the only way to achieve a predictable result is to cheat, steal and lie. Because everyone else does.

There are two kinds of people in this world, those who will lean into its principles thinking that (despite its ugly face) there is some shred of real science hidden underneath because of its (apparent) success in helping to model animal behaviors. But if Lassie played by the rules of Game Theory she'd leave Timmy down in the well because it would ac

Uh, in times past the US has been 100% independent. In fact, prior to WWII the US was very isolationist and doing just fine as an independent sleeper superpower.

Sanctions wouldn't do shit.

Prior to WWII, the US contained a significant portion of the world's manufacturing capabilities. A lot of new and high-tech (for the time) devices were made in part or in full in the USA.

Since then, the US has exported a significant portion of its manufacturing, to the point where it has not only not gained new manufacturing capabilities in the last 30-40 years, but it has actually lost manufacturing capabilities [slashdot.org] that it once possessed.

Haha, look at all the AC posts. You guys are fricken cowards. Like posting anonymously is somehow going to prevent the government from knowing who you are.

Look, you give an agency the task of preventing damage to your country - that is what they are going to try and do, any way they can or have to. And lets be real, laws are just a game. Everyday we see how loopholes, misinterpretations etc are used to get around anything. You think ANYONE at ANYTIME expected GE, Apple, Microsoft to pay 0 taxes? And yet

There is no morality to it. The law says you have to pay the least you are obligated to pay and if companies or individuals can make that 0% without violating other laws, then it is the legal amount they own.

The answer is not throwing your hands up and demanding the companies go to prison, it is in changing the laws they are using as loop holes in order to get away with it. Trust me, the IRS has very vindictive tax enforcers who have no problem throwing little old ladies into the street in order to get a fe

The USA pursued Gary McKinnon [wikipedia.org] for a decade for cracking some USA military and NASA computers, mainly those where incompetent sysadmins had not changed default passwords. What Gary McKinnon was wrong; but this is also wrong and worse by an order of magnitude.

Do we assume that the USA gov't will hand over those responsible as it wanted the UK to hand over Gary McKinnon ? I would eat all of my hats if the USA gov't even talked about the possibility.

His guilt depends. A few years back, a Swiss court decided with regard to somebody breaking into computers at the WEF, that a default password was equivalent to no password and a software secured by a default password was the same as unsecured software and hence no breaking in had happened, but rather access to a public resource. Accordingly, the person responsible walked. I find that quite a sensible verdict.

A government spokesperson states that any disclosure of classified material is harmful to our national security.

JFYI: Long time ago I worked with (then) top secret information in some Soviet scientific institution (Disclaimer: This info is a GPS coordinates and is not secret anymore). I have found that a fraudster pseudo-scientist successfully used the top secret status to cover his activity from scientific community and to milk the Russian military-industrial complex with his pseudoscientific activities.

I cannot believe that similar over-secrecy with similar results cannot happen everywhere, including US.

about 5 years ago, I was working on my PhD in computer security. We had a paper about some issues in SE Linux. We hadn't found any backdoors but there were a couple things that concerned us. It was accepted by a journal and then pulled at the last minute. No reason given but my advisor told us to drop it. "Bad career move" were the words he used.

And yet he still doesn't disclose what was weird or concerning to them even in an anonymous posting talking about finding something weird or concerning. It's like those whisper campaigns that don't really say anything bad but say something in a way that people interpret it badly then as momentum builds, things are simply added by people who think they heard more then what was said. Before you know it, an attorney general running for governor wants to take birth control away from women when the courts have said long ago that the state couldn't do that and nothing he done as the lead attorney for the state indicates that he ever wanted to do or try to do such things.

I mean even if he was scared/worried that something could come back on him, all he would need to do is find someone who doesn't care like at a defcon and tell them where to look anonymously.

Dude, you focus on anti terrorism but it has been happening long before that.

Some people claim the constitution is an archaic piece of paper which has long outlived its usefulness and should be reinterpreted as much as possible to get around it's limitations. We call these people the "living document" people who think reinterpreting definitions allows portions of it to change meanings as the needs of society changes. This is despite the fact that there is an amendment process and if anything actually did need changed, it could be using the amendment process. But the outcome is the second amendment being nothing but the military having the right to have guns and you and I can hunt, free speech zones (which was originally instituted by the democrats) equaling first amendment rights, removal of all religious displays from public view as the first amendment free exercise of religion, cops dressed like military assault teams having the right to kick in the wrong door and kill the occupants as being the forth amendment's right to be secure in your person, papers and effects. There are a lot more that has happened when we get away from strict interpretations of the US constitution.

You may have only noticed this crap with the war on terror. But it has been around for a while before it. Your rights have been subject to interpretations for quite a while now and terrorism is only the latest if the move.